I think the most important part of this now is, let's say the American people, but the polls show that the majority now don't want a war, anywhere, not only against Syria.

When you're in the middle of a storm, leaving your country just because you have to leave without any reasonable reason, it means you're quitting your country and this is treason.

We don't discuss this issue [ chemical weapons ] in public because we never said that we have it, and we never said that we don't have it. It's a Syrian issue ; it's a military issue we never discuss in public with anyone.

We are fully free, not partially, fully free, in everything related to the future of Syria.

When you have terrorism, you have a war. When you have a war, you always have innocent lives that could be the victim of any war, so, we don't have to discuss what the image in the west before discussing the image in Syria. That's the question.

Fighting the terrorists in Syria is not only in the interest of Syria or the Syrian people; in the interest of the Middle East, of Europe itself - something that many officials in the West don't see or don't realize or don't acknowledge - and in the interest of the Russian people, because they have been facing terrorists for decades now.

In the war, you lose areas, but you recapture another area. So, it is difficult to tell whether you are losing or gaining or it was a standstill. No-one has this answer.